The monster keeps me saf.., p.7
The Monster Keeps Me Safe, page 7
“How far are we going?” I asked as the SUV pulled onto the road.
“This is a rental car. My friends and I flew to get here, but I can’t get you on a plane. We’ll have to drive.” He plugged coordinates into a GPS in the dash. “Twelve hours to our destination. But we’re going to stop and stay somewhere. It’s getting late, and I’m too tired to drive straight through.”
I clasped my hands on my lap and tried not to think about sharing a motel room with him. When we reached the interstate, I started to cry
“Are you hungry?” he asked, ignoring the tears. He just didn’t seem to respond to crying.
In a way, I was glad he ignored it. I didn’t want to explain what it was I was crying about. As scared as I was of everything right now, that wasn’t what triggered the waterworks.
“It really is all still here. I can’t believe it.” Big semi-trucks zoomed past us on the interstate. Bright city lights framed one side of the road. I could see an uncountable number of restaurants and hotels, and suddenly it occurred to me I would be able to take real showers. And use a toilet like a civilized human.
“Elodie? Food? Do you want me to stop and get you some?”
He was being so nice, but then Trevor had been nice... kind of. Once I’d started cooperating with the insane world he’d invented, once I’d known all the triggers that made him angry and worked to skirt around them.
“C-can I have a burger and some fries?”
He nodded and took the exit off the interstate. We went through the drive-through, and about fifteen minutes later, we were back in motion.
“There’s a rest stop ten miles up the road. We’ll stop there to eat.”
“Okay.”
At the rest stop, we ate quietly. It was the best thing I’d ever had. As far as I knew. And soda. Holy shit. Soda, my new friend. I’d spent months drinking what I’d considered to be possibly questionable water—which Trevor had really just bought at the store with everything else. He couldn’t have pretended the park had some never ending supply of other beverages?
I was sure I must look like a pig, the way I was eating. But Shannon was busy with his own burger and fries. He seemed okay with silence. If we got down to it, Shannon seemed strangely calm and okay with just about everything. What the hell did he do for a living? Black ops? Contract killer? Did he torture people?
He seemed uncomfortably at home with other people’s suffering. So much so that I was shocked he’d had it in him to give any kind of shit about my outcome at all. And I wondered idly if he’d worked past that and was now suddenly over giving any kind of shit about it.
Trevor was the type who’d always had to be talking, and everything out of his mouth had been either baiting me for a fight or had seemed like a weird attempt at gaining my approval. Shannon didn’t seem to give a fuck what I approved of.
When we were finished, he went to throw out the trash. When he came back, he said, “Use the bathroom now if you need to. I’m not stopping again until I’m ready to stop for the night.”
I got out of the SUV, and he followed me up to the ladies’ room. He went inside and had a look around. I don’t know what or who he was looking for. I’m not sure if he had some paranoia that made him check the safety of every space before using it or if he thought there might be some other person in there, and I might ask for help.
Whatever he was looking for, when he was satisfied with what he saw—or didn’t see—he went outside to wait.
I can’t describe the luxury and meaning of an actual bathroom. I’d spent long periods of time back in the park just standing in the suite’s bathroom, wishing flushing toilets and hot showers were still a thing. And now they were. It was like Christmas. I flushed every toilet. I turned on every faucet.
I know that’s extremely strange, but it was like I couldn’t quite believe these were real things that functioned, and I had to test them all out just to make sure the world still worked. It was like... if every sink and toilet worked, grocery stores and malls still existed. That’s just the leap my brain made. Even seeing all the lights off the interstate and going through a drive-thru, I still felt the need to test the reality of every modern convenience I came upon. Just to be sure.
When I got outside, Shannon gave me another of those assessing cold stares. He’d obviously heard all the flushing and running water. Before I knew what was happening, he’d swiftly spun me around and pressed me against the brick wall outside. He patted me down.
“Okay, let’s go,” he said after a moment.
“W-what was that about?”
“Making sure you didn’t make a weapon or have a cell phone.”
“Make a weapon out of what?” And as if some dinky rest stop bathroom weapon was going to have any effect against someone like him. I wasn’t that suicidal.
“You were in there a while, and then there was all the flushing and faucets. I thought you might be masking some activity you didn’t want me to know about like making a weapon or calling for help.”
The more he worried I was going to kill him or call for help, the more I worried that maybe I really needed to be considering those options.
He kept a brisk pace back to the SUV while I stumbled along—like I’d just learned to walk last week—trying to keep up with him.
“Where the hell would I have gotten a cell phone?” I asked when I reached the passenger door, already out of breath. As if Trevor would have let me have one. Yeah, we had electricity. We could have kept one charged, but that would have completely defeated his end-of-the-world charade.
“There could have been one in the tower when we went up for shoes. I should have gone in with you and watched, but you were already so skittish, and I was more concerned with getting you out of the park undetected.”
“In the reality I was living in, cell phones no longer functioned, and even if they did, the cell phone companies would have all collapsed, preventing service from being provided. And the battery would have died anyway. So, no, I didn’t have a cell phone.”
“Right,” he said, looking almost human in his momentary embarrassment. “I can’t believe how elaborate his scam was.”
The way he said it, it seemed like some part of him respected or was impressed with the effort. Like professional admiration or something.
The SUV beeped and unlocked, and I got into the passenger side still a little shaken from the way Shannon had just flipped to that laser-focused place again. It was the same place he’d gone to when he was cutting Trevor up into small, barely recognizable pieces, and ideally I wanted him to spend as little time in that place while he was around me as possible.
More driving in silence while I stared out the window.
By this point, I was seriously contemplating trying to find a phone or make a weapon. How could I not? He kept putting the ideas in my head. If he’d just act like a normal person for five minutes, I might not be so paranoid.
What was I doing? I should have let him call the shooting in—back when it still looked like self-defense instead of like he was trying to cover crime tracks. Maybe I should have just let the police get involved and deal with the fall out and awfulness of being plastered all over the news some more and trying to cope with memory loss in the spotlight. Was my choice going to end up being... go to the police or die? Framed that way, I’d made the most foolish of all possible choices.
I’d just been so overwhelmed and didn’t want to go to the police or doctors or face a million questions and poking and prodding. I was terrified someone would finally come forward claiming to be someone close to me—someone else who might spin lies about my life that I had no choice but to go along with. I hadn’t thought about what asking Shannon not to make me face the world meant would happen next. Nor had I realized how quickly he’d spring into action and start hacking up a body like it was nothing. I mean... who did that?
What did they say about snakes? They’re more scared of you than you are of them? Shannon seemed in that category, like something had rattled him out of whatever in his world passed for comfortable. Now that it had happened, he saw me as a potential threat. And the last thing I wanted was for someone like Shannon to see me as a threat. So I sat very still and silent, hoping in another of his laser-focus moments, he’d somehow forget my existence so I could slip away quietly.
4
He drove a few hours before stopping at a run-down motel off a small, barely marked exit. Half of the neon-lit vacancy sign was burned out, but the point still got across.
I swear every single thing Shannon did was like the lead-up to the climax of a horror movie. Nothing was normal. It was all weird or paranoid or terrifying. I wasn’t sure I wanted Shannon to continue being my tour guide for life outside the park. During the drive, he hadn’t made conversation, and he hadn’t turned on the radio. And though, by the second hour on the road, I’d desperately wanted to turn on the radio, I didn’t make a move for it because I had no idea what he’d do in response.
He’d taken me through a drive-thru where I could have screamed for help but didn’t, then he’d treated me like a criminal at the rest stop. I just didn’t know what to expect from him. And I wasn’t sure knowing would be better anyway. It was Trevor all over again, just in slightly different packaging and without a colorful apocalyptic back story.
Shannon turned in his seat toward me. The clock on the dash said 10:48. This probably wasn’t a place that kept a front desk person all night. There was no doubt a bored clerk inside ready to go home, annoyed we’d just pulled up.
“I’m going in to get us a room. I’m locking you in the car. Do not make any kind of scene. Do you see that kid in there?”
I looked through the window he pointed at. A skinny college-aged guy stood behind the front desk, watching the clock and sending a look of derision our way. It was exactly the type of person I’d expected to see.
I nodded.
“Even if you make a scene, you have no way of knowing that kid wants to get involved in this. Not everybody is a hero. Most people aren’t. And I’m really good at reading people. He isn’t a hero. Are we understanding each other?”
If Shannon was so good at reading people, why didn’t he know I wouldn’t rat him out for killing Trevor? Though in honesty, I wasn’t even sure I wouldn’t have said something to the police, so maybe his radar was right on the money. Despite saving me, Shannon had crumbled apart my entire frame for the world. As terrible as it had been, it was far worse to know I’d suffered for months for no purpose and that everything I thought I knew of the world was a lie. There was a part of me that was angry with Shannon for throwing me into more chaos and for changing the lens I’d been viewing my life through.
He snapped his fingers in front of my face. “Elodie. Do we have an understanding?”
“Yes.”
He unbuckled his seat belt and started to open the car door.
“Shannon?”
“Yeah?”
“If you really don’t plan to hurt me, why are you acting like this?”
“Just protecting myself. You’re an unknown risk still. You’re too traumatized and flighty to trust.”
He was right about that, but still.
“You’re freaking me out. Can’t you just act normal?”
“I wouldn’t know where to start.” Shannon got out and locked me in and went inside to get a room.
Five minutes later he had a key. It was one of the old-fashioned keys attached to a red plastic ring where the room number was half worn away.
He drove us around to the back of the motel, parking the car where the license plate was pointed toward the room instead of where anyone driving by could see it. It was these little details that kept reminding me how deep in shit I was now. I didn’t know exactly what this guy was a pro at, but I knew he was a pro.
I got out and followed him inside. There was only one queen-sized bed.
“Why didn’t you get a double room?” There were only two other guests staying around the front side of the motel and none here at the back. They would have rooms left with two beds. If he didn’t have bad intentions why hadn’t he gotten me my own bed?
Shannon sighed. “One bed, you’re my wife or girlfriend. Two beds, and you’re an unknown variable. Two beds invites questions of who you are to me that makes someone remember me beyond the few minutes it took to check in. It’s never good to create questions in people’s minds. If you want to be a ghost, you have to learn that now.”
I hadn’t said I never wanted to re-integrate into the normal world. Just not right now. I still hoped I would regain my memory and then at least have some sense of solid ground underneath me before having to deal with nosy curiosity.
I tried to remind myself that this guy actually had friends, that he explored abandoned theme parks for fun. What had he called himself? An urban explorer? That sounded like some hipster nonsense. I couldn’t even imagine how that Shannon meshed with this one.
Once inside, I used the bathroom then came back out to the main area. The place was a bit run down, but clean. Well, clean enough. I didn’t have a black light to shine on the walls, and I probably didn’t want one. Sometimes a place just looking clean was enough.
Shannon put the chain on the door and scooted a chair underneath it like he thought we were going to be under siege any minute. Yet none of his movement was frantic. It was all calm and calculated, and once again, I thought he was going to kill me.
“Lie down on the bed.”
“W-what?” Or rape me.
“We’re going to sleep.”
I wasn’t convinced by his explanation, but he’d kind of blocked me in here. And I’d gone along with most of the steps along the way. Suddenly something flashed into my head. It was like a memory, but I wasn’t sure if it was anything attached to my life personally or just some random bit of general knowledge my brain had held onto. Don’t let them take you to a second location. Fight like hell to avoid it.
I kept telling myself this was my fault somehow. I never should have asked him not to involve the cops. But if Shannon was really bad, he could have done whatever he’d wanted anyway. As if he would have called for real help if he were evil. Who was I kidding? This guy had clearly done evil things. Me not being a target of it... yet... didn’t change that basic truth.
“Elodie, I’m tired. I want to get on the road early tomorrow. My house is much nicer than this. You’ll have your own room there.”
Room or basement? Or garden shed?
He started to look impatient. I didn’t want to escalate things, so I lay down. For better or worse, this was where I was now, and there was no real way out of it that didn’t escalate into violence. I had a very strong feeling that if I fought him too hard, that thing in his brain would click on again and he’d decide I was too much trouble.
Shannon undid the nylon holding my borrowed pants in place and ripped it out of the belt loops. Before I could process what he was doing, he had my hands over my head and tied to the headboard. He could have used the rope in his bag, but I got the feeling he wanted to move into and own my space.
The headboard was older and solidly well-made with slats to run rope through. Maybe Shannon was just super lucky. Or maybe he’d done this before. Though I was sure, even without such a convenient way to tie me down, he would have easily figured something else out with whatever the room had offered him instead.
“Please, don’t do this.” I was crying and blubbering, and right on the cusp of a panic attack. And despite my best efforts not to become too much trouble for him to keep dealing with, I struggled, however vainly. But it was nothing to him and didn’t slow him down more than a few seconds in his goal.
Once I was secured, Shannon shut off the lights, kicked off his boots, and lay down on the other side of the bed, turning his back to me.
“Go to sleep. Things won’t seem as bad in the morning.”
Shannon was a man who obviously knew how to create trauma but didn’t know the first thing about undoing it. Nearly everything he’d said or done from the moment we’d met had triggered one fear or another. He’d kept me on a razor’s edge of anxiety, but somehow I didn’t think it had been intentional.
Even so, it was well past the point when Shannon’s breath deepened in sleep before I could find my own fitful peace for the night.
The next morning, I had that experience where you wake up in a new place and forget how you got there. Except for me, this was a bit more upsetting, seeing as the last time it happened, no memories came back to fill in the spaces.
I felt my hands tied, panicked, and screamed.
Shannon rolled over faster than I thought a human could move. His hand clamped over my mouth so hard I was sure there would be a red hand mark when he removed it.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he hissed.
I whimpered behind his hand.
“If you scream again, so help me...”
I shook my head frantically. What good would that do me? It wasn’t as if I’d planned to scream in the first place.
He pulled his hand away slowly.
“I forgot where I was, and my arms are asleep, and I freaked out. I-I’m sorry.”
The sun streamed into the room around the edges of the curtains. Shannon untied the nylon around my wrists and rubbed them until the pins and needles sensation faded. It was the first time I’d gotten a really good look at him.
The castle had been dark except for the fireplace the previous night, and it had of course been dark outside. It wasn’t as if he’d been a total visual mystery to me. But there were details you could only fully catch in the light of day—like the fact that he had the longest, most beautiful dark eyelashes I’d ever seen on a man. But somehow they didn’t make him seem less scary or any less masculine.
